


Ulex

by JefferyHeyJeffery



Series: What Fools We've Been [1]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Drabble, Eventual Fluff, Hanahaki Disease, How Do I Tag, Hurt/Comfort, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, I promise, M/M, Mentions of Suicidal Thoughts, because im a sap, everything is fine, flower symbolism, hanahaki, i got too into the flowers, lets be real, lots of feelings, no regrets, thats never acted on though dont worry, yeet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-24
Updated: 2018-04-24
Packaged: 2019-04-27 04:20:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14417550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JefferyHeyJeffery/pseuds/JefferyHeyJeffery
Summary: The ulex is a small mountain flower. It’s best suited for poor growing areas, they thrive in rocky soils where other plants have no chance.They are resilient to droughts and harsh weather.They are fire-climax plants. Fire is how they survive and reproduce and grow.In essence, they live for flame.





	Ulex

**Author's Note:**

> Interested in Ed's POV?   
> Check out Hyacinth ;3

This wasn’t happening. 

It wasn’t.

There was no way.

He was the Fuhrer and this couldn’t be happening. 

It couldn’t. 

He hadn’t even seen him in a year. 

Why now?

Why of all times now?

 

Everyone knows that there are an unlucky few who get the disease. The feelings have to be strong and lasting and whole. Not many people had that. Not many were unfortunate enough to fall so hard for someone without ever letting that person know how they feel. Not many were that stubborn. 

The flowers are symbolic. So just in case someone thought that they were mistaken, that they weren’t in love, the flowers are the color of the object of their affection’s eyes. The flowers represent that person. The flower’s traits are shared by them. 

If it went on for too long, if the flowers were permitted to grow, if the feelings were never returned, then the sufferer would eventually suffocate on the petals. 

They would choke on their love. 

It was terminal. 

 

So there Roy Mustang kneeled. 

Frozen.

Shocked. 

Terrified by the small ulex petals on the floor in front of him. 

They were golden. 

They were flecked with blood and they were a brilliant undeniable gold. 

 

He choose not to tell anyone about his condition. 

He didn’t have the time to deal with it. That's what he told himself. 

He didn’t have time

He didn’t tell anyone but Riza must have known. And Roy didn’t know how she did, but she did somehow. He of all people should have realized that he couldn’t keep anything from the hawk’s eyes for very long. She didn’t say anything, but she didn’t have to. After so many years by her side, he knew how to read her eyes and every slight movement of her eyebrows. Right now she was asking if he was okay. At least, that’s what he thought that’s what she was saying. Lately, he was having problems with concentrating on anything. He wasn’t getting a lot of sleep and the back of his eyes hurt and he just wanted to sleep but he couldn’t do that anymore without feeling the flowers filling his lungs.

But Riza kept looking up from her desk every five minutes like clockwork. She wanted to know if he was okay and honestly, Roy didn’t have that answer himself. He wanted to say he was okay. He should be great. He was Fuhrer, and he should be the happiest person in Amestris. But instead, he was tired and anxious and scared. 

The flowers have been in his lungs for weeks and he knew he needed to do something about it sooner or later. The sooner the better honestly. 

But how was he supposed to fix this? 

Go to Resembool? Destroy Edward’s new life to tell him hey, I’ve known you since you were twelve and now I’m so in love with you that it’s literally killing me? 

The thought nearly made Roy laugh. This whole thing was so ridiculous and depressing and fucked up. 

Roy felt disgusting and wrong. 

So he didn’t look at Riza and he didn’t even attempt to answer her voiceless question. 

 

At night he tried to drown the flowers in a flood of whiskey. But they were still there when the bottle was gone. He could feel them brushing up against his chest, permeating every square inch of his lungs.

For just one second, he mused over the thought of burning them out of his chest. 

All it would take was a snap. 

Ulex were highly flammable after all. 

 

It’s thought that people with the disease had only six months to live if they choose to do nothing. If that was the case then Roy only had five left. 

And he honestly didn’t plan on doing anything. 

 

Hawkeye slammed her paperwork on her table then told Havoc, Falman, Breda, and Fuery to go to lunch. Sure she seemed like she was being polite but her tone was stern and hard enough to scare the shit out of the military men. 

They got out of there as fast as they could, side-eyeing Roy as they left the office. 

She shut the large wooden doors and then walked over to stand in front of Roy’s desk. Her arms were crossed and it was pretty obvious that she wasn’t about to move until he started talking. 

“What is it you want to talk ab-”

“Who is it?” She cut him off abruptly. It’s something that she rarely did and it just served to prove how serious she was. 

Roy glared at her. He didn’t want to talk about it. 

He stared her down, refusing to be the first one to cave into this terrible silence. 

She sighed and placed her hands akimbo. “Sir, with all due respect, if you wish not to take care of this yourself, then there are surgeries that can-”

“And rip out what could very well be the last of my humanity? I’d rather not.” 

And that was the truth. If these flowers could prove that even a monster like him could love, then he’d keep them. If they could prove that the hero of Ishval had a soul then he would rather die suffocating. 

In the back of his mind, he figured that the flowers were a punishment. One rightly deserved for what he has done. And he was more or less okay with that. For all those he destroyed with fire and ash. For all those who were choked by smoke. 

Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to burn them away. 

Maybe that’s what whatever sick god was watching wanted from him, to have some sort of righteous balance. 

To have equivalent exchange. 

 

One night, staring into whiskey gold, he idly wondered who would replace him when he was gone. He hoped that it would be Riza, she had all the potential in the world to become a wonderful leader. She follows through with her promises and she’s loyal and devoted to her country. She knows what is right and wrong and she understands that the ends often justify the means, but only to a point. She is willful and cunning and strict. 

She is one of the strongest people Roy has ever had the pleasure of knowing. 

But she never expressed an interest in ruling the country. 

Years ago, when soldiers in blue coats sought refuge in desert bars and taverns, away from spying eyes and anyone who truly cared, Roy would go on rants about changing the world and becoming the head of Amestris, and others would join in. They would pipe up about what they wanted changed and how much better they would be able to rule. They would say how much better things would be if only they were given a shot. 

But that was never Riza. She was calm and quiet and reserved and never once did she offer input about how much better things could be. She was never interested in words. What she could do was through action, and that she did very well. 

In the end, she would never need a fancy office or title. She did what she thought was right and that much was good enough for her. 

She would never become the Fuhrer. That wasn’t the path she followed or wanted. But Roy wished in vain that it was. He trusted her to do what was right. He trusted few others to honestly do the same. 

 

Four months left.

Yellow flowers become increasingly soaked in red. 

Coughing fits happen more and more often and each time he feels like he’s about to lose all of the contents of his stomach. It’s all he can do to try to not cough while at work. There are so many flowers now. They would know. 

They can’t know. 

They would worry and he can’t handle anyone looking at him Riza does. 

He just can’t.

 

His chest always hurts these days, but the dull ache of pain becomes borderline unbearable when he even thinks about Fullmetal. Thoughts of his golden hair haunt him as he stares at the spilled ulex. Every sunrise, every streak of yellow in the sky, every flash of lightning, every star makes him think of the fire behind his eyes. 

The gleam of metal triggers memories of long since gone automail joints and limbs. 

Just trying not to think about him never works. The thoughts come flooding to him at night when the spirits have begun to wear his down and his mind isn’t strong enough to fight them off. Thoughts of his lips and the curve of his waist and things someone of his standing should never be thinking about.

Things that he will never be able to have. 

Things he knows that, no matter how much he silently wishes they would, will be able to come true. 

Things that make his eyes burn more than his chest.

 

Havoc tries to treat him to drinks at the bar but he comes up with some bullshit excuse of having too much work to do. He stays in the office all night, trying to prove to himself that he isn’t a liar. 

He has to move the garbage near himself as he works. After that, he just doesn’t have the strength to get up from his chair. 

He can’t remember falling asleep but he wakes to Riza shouting at him. 

“Sir! Sir, are you alright?” She shakes his shoulder and he groans and attempts to turn away from her. He can feel himself let out a hiss of pain, any movement of his torso causes the aches in his chest to become deeper and so much worse. 

He starts coughing and spitting flowers and blood and she looks horrified. That was understandable. She looks so panicked and the thought makes Roy’s chest hurt and he coughs more and more. 

Red and yellow stain the edges of his desk and he tries to apologize for the mess but the words don’t come. 

 

She ends up taking him home and tucks him into his own bed and he can vaguely make out her saying that she was going to make some phone calls. 

Part of him wishes that she wouldn’t, but he wants this pain to go away and he knows that he can’t keep this up forever. He would like to pretend that he’s strong enough but he knows that he’s only human. 

 

In the morning he is alone. Riza was long gone and Roy sits in bed for well over an hour, trying to fall back asleep, stuck in the comforting in-between state of awake and asleep. When his mind is cloudy like this, he can almost forget about his reality. He can ignore the pain spiking through his chest. He can pretend that there aren’t any flowers in his lungs. 

He can pretend that he never met Edward Elric and his fiery personality and rich ambition and boundless energy. Roy can always act like he was never madly in love with the younger man’s selfless character or determination. It took years, sure. 

That much is a given. 

He was so young and broken when they first met. But the eldest Elric had always been beyond his years. He’s seen the horrors of the world with more clarity than people who have lived for decades longer. 

He is a boy who does what no one could even imagine regularly. 

At eleven he attempts human transmutation. 

At seventeen Fullmetal defeats a god. 

And at every moment in between the teen carried with him the weight of worlds. He inspired a great many to rise to glory and did his best to strike down those corrupt others. He befriended future rulers and demons. He made enemies of the most powerful creatures to ever come into existence. Behind him, he rallied whole nations to come together as one. At the end of it all, he may very well have saved the entire universe when he gave up his alchemy. 

Even though he couldn’t see at the time, Mustang would still consider Edward beautiful and glorious in that moment. 

It’s honestly a surprise to the Fuhrer that it took a year for the flowers to start growing after that battle. But that’s when the seeds must have been planted. He just watered them with his thoughts of the impossible. 

It was long after the promised day when he came to terms with his emotions and by then it seemed far too late to do anything about it. 

And that was fine until the flowers came, obviously. 

 

Roy yawned as he stretched, back cracking in a multitude of areas. Petals caressed the inside of his trachea but he could ignore them for now if he concentrated. So he focused instead on the idea of getting himself coffee. 

He poured himself a hot mug and pointedly thought about the dark coffee and not the golden light streaming through the kitchen. 

 

Hours later there came a knocking. To call it knocking would actually be an understatement, it was a pounding on the door that made Roy just about jump out of his skin. 

He rushed over to his front door, thinking that Riza must have come by to check up on him. He must have looked awful before, so it was only understandable that she would-

He swung open the door and there on his porch, bathed in the light of the setting summer sun was Edward Elric. Notably taller than when Roy had seen him last and under other circumstances the thought would have made the flame alchemist laugh but now… now he was just trying to keep his lungs and his heart from collapsing in on themselves. 

In Ed’s hand is a deep blue flower, flecked with crimson. 

A hyacinth. 

A flower born of blood and competition. 

His flower. 

Roy never fathomed that he wasn’t alone in his suffering. He never thought that Ed felt the same way and certainly he never once entertained the idea that Fullmetal loved him the same. Loved him like this. 

If Roy had a ulex on hand he would have shown it to Edward, but at the moment he couldn’t even feel the slightest hint of petals in his lungs. 

And Roy didn’t have the words to express his emotions so he just decided to grab Edward by the collar and pull him inside. Thank god Ed had the presence of mind to close the door because that thought hadn’t even crossed Roy’s mind. Not when Ed’s lips were suddenly on his. Not when they were softer and fuller then he had ever dared to dream about before. Not when, for the first time in what felt like forever, he felt whole and secure and safe in those beautiful bronze arms wrapped around his shoulders. 

 

Later, wrapped in a tangle of bronze skin and running his hands through bright golden hair did Roy finally laugh. Relief and happiness flooding his system all at once. 

“What fools we’ve been.” He said through a grin. 

Edward just laughed along with him before pulling him in for another loving kiss.

**Author's Note:**

> *wheezes* well, that was certainly a trip omfg  
> thank you so much for reading <3
> 
> OH! also, the mythos behind the hyacinth is that two gods (Apollo and Zephyr) were competing to win the favor of Hyakinthos (so this flower is already pretty gay ok and I LOVE IT). Apollo was teaching Hyakinthos how to throw a discus and Zephyr, in a jealous rage, blew the discus back and it ended up killing Hyakinthos. The flower that grew from his spilled blood is the hyacinth.  
> Okay, I really like mythology and I wanted to tell ya about it! Again, tysm for reading!


End file.
